2016-2019 EDHEC/LTIIA Research Chair

This project follows the completion of the EDHEC/Meridiam/Campbell-Lutyens Research Chair (2013-2016). The Long-Term Infrastructure Investor Association, which was created by the original sponsors of the Chair, brings its support to the creation and population of a global infrastructure equity cash flow database.

This database is being built by the EDHEC Infrastructure Investment Institute from investor contributions and primary documentation (financial statements, project documentation etc), will cover thousands of investments globally, and will allow the production of infrastructure equity benchmarks.

The Research Chair was officially launched at the EDHECinfra Forum in London on March 16th, 2016.

Two LTIIA members, Campbell-Lutyens and the Club of Long-Term Investors provide additional support to this project.

Achievements of the first EDHEC/MERIDIAM/Campbell Lutyens Research Chair

Over the 2013-2016 period, the first EDHEC/Meridiam/Campbell-Lutyens Chair (link):

1. Made regular and important contributions to the prudential regulatory debate, especially the adaptation of the Solvency-2 framework to:

– Work towards a clearer definition of infrastructure investment;
– Propose a dedicated prudential treatment for infrastructure, thus defined;
– Calibrate this new prudential treatment and achieve a lower level of capital charge for insurers investing in infrastructure.

2. The Chair has also been involved in the policy-setting process in various fora, including:

– At the G20-level in Moscow, Sydney, Istanbul and Singapore;
– In regional fora such as the OECD, the EU, or APEC.

3. In this context, the Chair contributed directly to the definition of a data collection standard for asset pricing and the calibration of risk models, which is currently being discussed as an output of the G20 Investment and Infrastructure Working Group (IIWG) in 2015.

4. The work of the Chair has also been instrumental in informing and educating investors about infrastructure project debt and its characteristics through:

– 10 academic publications and a new book;
– 16 presentations at industry and policy events;
– 7 articles and more than 100 mentions in the financial and specialised press.

5. Finally, the Chair’s work led to significant applied research outputs:

– The development of a dedicated asset pricing technology for privately-held infrastructure equity investments;
– The definition of a parsimonious data collection and reporting template;
– The calibration of models of default frequency and correlation using new data collected by EDHEC and providing of the sole sources of empirical knowledge on these issues.